In this review we take a peek at the Radeon R9-280X WindForce from Gigabyte. Armed with a customized PCB and one of their triple fan based WindForce edition coolers they factory overclocked the produc... Gigabyte Radeon R9-280X WindForce OC review ATTN: AMD asked us to move several AIB reviews towards the 10th. This means this article can't be read by the generic public any longer. However if you are logged into the forums, then click on the link. You can read it, just for guru's.
"Overclocking then, we see nice results, we could easily set the card at 1150 MHz. Despite many regulation from NVIDIA, AMD is leaving the voltage bandwidth threshold much wider." Well, Gigabyte has chosen to limit its 7970 series too. But they won't tell anyone about it. The trick is to have unlocked cards at launch and then sometime later add a new revision silently which limits the voltage. People then read the reviews of the unlocked cards and buy them. Because this is a hardware lock flashing the BIOS with one of an unlocked card will not work. A lot of Gigabyte customers fell into that trap. Look at their forums. Not many happy customers there.
So its on par with 770? But it cost less, think this might be my next card. I just need to find out if there is an advantage over 7970 and its worth paying a little extra!
There is a small advantage, but the price difference would determine if it's actually worth it. If you're not one of those that must have the latest card, I'd go for a 7970 and overclock it. Those cards (with custom coolers) overclock quite well.
That is a very good deal! or Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7970 Windforce 3X for the same price. shame 280x doesnt offer free games anymore.
This ASUS product is cooling fairly well, expect roughly 70 Degrees C under heavy GPU load in a proper ventilated PC. <--- this line is totally still present in this review
There's also these decent deals http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-...hz-gddr5-1010mhz-2048-cores-4x-dp-dvi-d-dvi-i http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...R5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=57787
Not necessarily.. I had a windforce 6870 and the thing was by no means quiet.. it was exacerbated by the fact that I run a very quiet system intentionally.. the two 6870s I had, including that one windforce accounted for probably 90% of the noise coming from my rig.
Yea , my 7970Ghz is locked. I don't care much right now , but when GPU will become bottleneck i would welcome extra 10-15% performance. Also i was pretty sure custom boards like gigabyte would be unlocked. Why they lock it anyway ?
